


tell me a story

by Anonymous



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), like major angst, there’s mcd but i promise it’s not terrible it’s more of a rebirth than death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28878387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After the fall, Will tends to Hannibal's wounds, both physical and mental ones.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34
Collections: anonymous





	tell me a story

When he says it for the first time, Will’s hands don’t feel attached to his body. The unknown object they are, he sees them trembling, struggling to unpack what he knows is the last of their sterile gauze. The medical kit has been emptying itself while they weren’t looking and Chiyoh is not coming back to refill it. The cabin she brought them to is so deep in forest’s belly and she is not coming back for them. No one is coming back.

“Tell me a story,” Hannibal says. His eye sockets abysmal, two glassy irises still stubbornly peeking out. He oozes calmness and it makes Will want to look away. He abandons the half-open gauze and sits on the side of the bed.

Hannibal touches his forearm with cold fingers and begs for a fairytale with his sunken eyes. He begs for a story to be told so Will tells him about a lonesome birch tree in the middle of an oak forest. He tells him about its black and white bark and the leaves that make wind. He lets Hannibal hold his wrist and close those tired eyes, imaging a lonely birch behind them.

He picks up the gauze again, only once Hannibal has drifted off. He cleans the wound and wraps it up tightly, even though it looks worse than yesterday. Then he lays down on the other side of the bed and drifts off too. He dreams of the oak forest and the birch tree the forest doesn’t understand.

Hannibal’s cough wakes him up. There’s blood this time. The gauze he’s placed over the wound only some hours ago is going crimson again. There’s blood on Hannibal’s chin in the dark and not the kind Will wants to see.

“Tell me a story,” Hannibal says again and this time Will expands it. He makes up crows to fly high around the treetop. Their beaks clutching branches and pulling the solitary birch out of soil. He tells Hannibal how the crows turned their birch’s roots into limbs and now it’s walking away. _See it walk behind your eyes,_ he tells Hannibal, _see it run and escape the ugly oaks, it never belonged there._

Hannibal puts his head in Will’s lap and says “It’s a nice story.”

Will finds himself wanting to look away again, but this time he doesn’t. Instead, he looks into those dry lips and stuck-out cheekbones. He brushes a hand over Hannibal’s cheek. “I never thought dying would look like this.”

Hannibal leans into the touch. “I’m not dying,” He assures Will.

“No. No, you’re not.” Will tells him. He feels it is true.

At dawn chorus he wakes up to a cold body beside him. The birds are loud outside and the sun is coming in through the window. Hannibal keeps his eyes closed when he tells him to take off the bandages. “I want it to breathe,” he says. “Let our wounds breathe and warm up in the sun.”

So Will unwraps the bloody gauze around Hannibal’s middle and unpeels the one covering his shoulder. The blood glistens in the morning light. He lays next to Hannibal and takes a hold of his hand.

“Tell me one last story.”

Will inhales and tells Hannibal how the crows guided their lonesome birch. How it ran and ran and ran until it hit the end of the world. And there, on the meadow, how it saw an equally breathless, surrounded-by-crows birch and it knew that the running was no more. And most importantly, _the loneliness was no more._ This was the begging of both their lives. Up there on the meadow, limb in limb, with their leaves making wind for each other.

And when Hannibal’s eye close, Will closes his too and sees the two of them running behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> if it helps i cried too
> 
> kudos? comments?


End file.
